


a great opportunity squandered? absolutely. a crushing blow? yes. will i get over it? no. but life goes on

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Common Law Marriage, Denial, F/F, Family Issues, Future Fic, Internalized Homophobia, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Rule 63, Sibling Bonding, The Seven Year Hitch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-10 07:27:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12907074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: Ronan thinks that twenty-six is a bit old for Gansey to still be going on about an adolescent romance, but mostly maintains this as a rebuke to herself. Gansey and Blue at least made it to their twenties, if only barely, and had a proper breakup with yelling and cruel words and months of angry silence. It was so much more dignified than being taken aside quietly, having both her hands held, and listening to a gentle list of her faults.I think our goals are taking us on diverging paths.I think it must be very difficult to come to terms with your sexuality while worrying about someone else’s happiness.I think, considering how much we were all going through, it makes perfect sense that you were never able to fully move past your feelings for Gansey.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an au of _The Seven Year Hitch_ , the best Hallmark movie of all time, in which a guy claims to be common law married to his best friend to stop her from marrying a jerk. Seems weird to me that common law marriage wasn't a suggested tag but _whatever_.

“I’ve been very lucky,” Gansey says right after hanging up the phone. She’s wearing the face that means she’s about to say something Ronan won’t like, and would prefer if she kept calm. It is, incidentally, nearly identical to the face she uses during all calls with her parents. “I’ve been very lucky. I experienced a great and powerful love early, when some people never do.”

“Sure.” Ronan thinks that twenty-six is too old to still be going on about an adolescent romance, but mostly maintains this as a rebuke to herself. Gansey and Blue at least made it to their twenties, if only barely, and had a proper breakup with yelling and cruel words and months of angry silence. It was so much more dignified than being taken aside quietly, having both her hands held, and listening to a gentle list of her faults.

_I think our goals are taking us on diverging paths._

_I think it must be very difficult to come to terms with your sexuality while worrying about someone else’s happiness._

_I think_ _, considering how much we were all going through, it makes perfect sense that you were never able_ _to fully move past_ _your feelings for Gansey_ _._

Ronan hadn’t known it was possible to be so humiliated. It was worse, even, than her stay in the hospital, when she’d had to find lies close enough to the truth to be delivered convincingly, and so had detailed heaps of her most personal bullshit to an audience that included her at-the-time least favorite person. Either Ava was lying, and thought her too weak to take the truth, or she wasn’t, and Ronan was really so pitiful that she had to be dumped for her own good.

She had already been spending most of her time at the Barns—goals, diverging—but once they were done, she no longer had any reason to go elsewhere. Gansey’s road trip had turned into a multiyear jaunt with flights overseas when she could convince Blue not to feel bought. She had all her mail sent to the Barns since she was never in one place long enough, and after the breakup, she came back too, and never left.

“My parents want to set me up with some guy they know.” Gansey shrugs. She’s been different since she and Blue split, a slightly deflated version of herself. Example: it is very unlike her to stagnate, but here she is, still at the Barns, nearly five years later. And sure, she's published several unreadably academic tomes on Glendower, taught a couple e-seminars, but it's the longest she's stayed still since she first got a passport. She hasn’t said anything, but since Blue, she has only dated men, and only men her parents would approve of. 

Ronan makes a very loud, very disgusted noise. Gansey rolls her eyes. “They have a point. Helen  _was_ married by now, and I haven’t even been dating seriously. I’m just going to give him a chance.”

One date turns into six, turns into a dozen, all of which end with her back at the Barns, exhausted and dead-eyed. One day, she comes home with her hands stuffed deep into her pockets, her shoulders slumped. Their dates are always to stupid little restaurants where a meal costs two hundred dollars and consists of a single fish eye or foam or something, so she invariably returns ravenous and more than a bit drunk. Instead of rummaging through the freezer for her favorite flavor of Hot Pockets, she sits across from Ronan at the battered kitchen table.

“Please be reasonable, Ronan.” Gansey looks like she hasn’t slept in years. She looks like she’s been crying. Her hands are still in her pockets. Ronan wants to say that she is always reasonable, but the joke doesn’t feel funny. She can’t believe Gansey was this into him, to be so devastated by what must be a break-up. Before she can find something reasonably sympathetic that will double as an  _I told you so_ , Gansey pulls her left hand out of her pocket and sets it on the table, a slight clink sounding. Ronan stares at her finger, at her face, at the unevenly-stained wood. She realizes that she’s standing and is unable to say why, just that she feels on the verge of something too big to be handled sitting down. “ _Ronan_ ,” Gansey says, a bit whiny, and Ronan sits like her strings have been cut. Gansey was always the one with her shit together. This doesn’t feel right. She still hasn’t said anything, and Gansey, already wilted, begins to slump even further.

“Well,” Ronan says finally. Gansey’s hand is barely a foot away. She could reach out if she wanted to, and hold it, or yank the ring off and send it spinning down the drain. In all honesty, it probably wouldn’t go; the main stone is massive diamond, surrounded by only slightly smaller emeralds. It’s the kind of ring meant to stake a claim. “It’s the 21st century, Gansey; we aren’t doing arranged marriages anymore."

“Well, that’s dramatic," Gansey says. She tucks her hand back into her pocket like she doesn’t want Ronan looking at it. “I  _like_ him. And my parents like him. And if you gave him a chance, you might tolerate him. And—and I was going to ask you to be my Maid of Honor, but if you’re going to be such a pain about it, I won’t.”

Ronan scoffs. She feels like when the real Gansey disappeared, the best parts of herself did too. “You’re already letting your parents pick your husband, why not the rest of it? Helen will be your Maid of Honor, and my invitation and Blue’s will be lost in the mail. Ava can sit in the back.”

Ronan stays a moment longer than she wants to, hopeful that if she just holds out a bit longer, Gansey will remember herself, come back to the girl she used to be. Nothing happens, and she starts to feel stupid, standing there and waiting for a miracle that isn't going to come. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for casual mentions of alcohol abuse!

Ronan loves talking to Martha, but sometimes she needs actual advice, and not just for someone to half-listen and then say, “Oh, that sounds bad." Those times, she goes to Devin.

Devin never quite got out of the habit of answering the phone by the second ring. She's mostly stopped living in the adrenaline-pumping days of their adolescence, but is unerringly aware that they all made it through on luck and the grace of God. By staying at the Barns, Ronan has been able to reshape their corner of the world, eradicate the darkest memories, make it—and her subconscious—livable again. Devin left, so she never got to prove to herself that it could be safe. "Hello?" The slight tension in her voice makes Ronan glad she didn't text "911!!!" like she'd considered.

"I'm not dying or anything, but you need to meet me in town." Ronan puts her phone on speaker when she starts her car, even though she never has more than one hand on the wheel at any given moment. Ordinarily when she leaves in a huff, Gansey texts within thirty seconds to make sure she's all right, and to offer a ride home. Now the only noise coming from her phone is the sound of Devin being loudly and performatively disgruntled.

"We don't have the same 'in town,' Ronan. I'm two hours away, and it's nearly midnight."

Ronan takes a sharp turn too fast, hoping Devin will somehow be able to tell she's doing something stupid."So?"

"So some of us have actual responsibilities other than our hobby farms." Ronan can hear, in the background, the rustling of movement, a chair pushed in and keys gathered. "Tell me what's going on, and we'll see."

"It's important. It's  _Gansey_." Ronan means to continue, but is interrupted by Devin groaning in her ear.

"When isn't it? And it really can't be done over the phone? It can't wait?"  On the other end, a door clicks shut.

"She got engaged." Ronan intended to wait to reveal this, to put off the inevitable mockery until they were face-to-face and she could communicate the seriousness of it, but it slips out with less gravity than she'd like. 

Devin doesn't speak for a while, and Ronan assumes she's looking for a diplomatic way to say  _Fuck off_ , since they're supposed to be getting along now. She takes a couple of bitten-off breaths. "Am I right in assuming you won't stop calling me until I agree?"

"Pretty much."

" _Fine_. See you in two. Don't do anything stupid."

That leaves Ronan with a decent amount of time to fill, so she heads to the skeeviest bar in town, the one she frequented when she was back at Aglionby. She was never carded, and though this was probably just a marker of the establishment's haphazard approach to law enforcement, she always preferred to interpret it as being specific to her, perhaps because she looked like the type of girl liable to burn the place down.

She can feel when she's at the perfect stopping point, the empties on her table having left her with the warm, light feeling of being not herself, or of being a self she hasn't been in over a decade. She orders another beer. Before she can drink it, though, Devin appears in the doorway, emanating the disgusted, off-balance air of a rich woman in a bad part of town, which is what they both are, technically. She could take most anyone in here, Ronan thinks, which means the way she's clutching her purse to her side is on purpose, to make a point about the series of poor choices that brought them here. She perches on the very edge of her seat just in time for last call. "What a charming establishment," she says, and pulls Ronan's beer toward her, taking a long pull. “I didn’t drive all the way here just to watch you drink yourself into incoherence.” She wipes some foam off of her upper lip. “And it’s been years since Dad died; you can quit pretending to like Guinness.” Under less dire circumstances, Ronan would allow herself to be drawn into the usual argument about acquired tastes and cultural loyalty, but now she just sits very still and stares very coldly at the drink just out of reach, until Devin sighs. "Forget it. Settle your bill and let's get out of here."

Ronan displays her empty hands. "Do you have cash? Because I don't." Devin rolls her eyes but fishes her wallet out of her purse with a minimum of complaint.

Devin is driving a new car every time Ronan sees her, so she doesn't know where they're heading until she's half-stumbled past the vehicle Devin is letting herself into. It's taking most of her brain power to walk in a mostly straight line, to hold herself like someone who didn't regress to her teenage coping mechanisms at just the thought of losing half-life she's been living. She backtracks and fumbles with the handle on the passenger's side before collapsing into her seat.

"Focus!" Devin snaps her fingers in front of Ronan's face. "I'd like to get  _some_ sleep tonight. Gansey is getting married, and you're handling it about as well as anyone would have expected. At the risk of sounding cold, so? What am I doing here?"

"I want you to help me figure out a way to stop this. She's going to be miserable with this asshole."

"And you're not jealous at all." 

Ronan considers lying, but can't marshal the energy to do so effectively. "I didn't say that. But it's not the  _problem_. I just want her to be happy." She feels stupid saying it, cracked open and vulnerable and frustratingly obvious. Devin puts a hand on her arm, too firmly, like she's remembering Niall teaching them that a proper handshake should overwhelm the recipient. This isn't the kind of relationship they have, even with all the years they've spent half-heartedly working through their issues. Their biggest accomplishment is a record-breaking three years of Midnight Mass without a parking lot fistfight.

She's just beginning to let herself appreciate it when Devin says, her voice overly soft, "Did this really  _need_ to be done tonight?" 

Ronan's back stiffens, and she shakes her arm loose. "There's going to be an announcement in the paper, idiot. And there's no way she'll back down once it's been publicized. You need to help me fix this.  _Tonight_."

"It's past two." Devin yawns with such impeccable timing that the wounded little-sister part of Ronan suspects her of faking it. "What do you think we're going to come up with in the next few hours that you haven't tried in the entire decade you've been trailing after her?"

" _Something_." Ronan turns on the radio in hopes that it will hide the quaver in her voice. "I'm not letting her do this."

"I hate to say it, Ronan, but your input isn't exactly required..." Devin cocks her head, staring at Ronan thoughtfully. She fishes her phone from her purse and unlocks it.

"Are you seriously checking your email right now?"

"Someone needed me to trek across the state in the middle of the week. It isn't  _unreasonable_ for me to follow up with a few work contacts." Ronan tries not to feel disappointed. Her relationship with Devin has improved, but there's certainly no justification for being shocked that she's checked out.

"Right in front of me? I'm not  _finished_."

"Shut up, Ronan," Devin murmurs, still focused on the screen. Even two years ago, Ronan would have snatched her phone and tossed it out the window. Her fingers itch. Devin speaks just as she's about to give in, emotional maturity be damned. "Have you heard of common law marriage?" She doesn't wait for Ronan to respond, which is just fine because Ronan has never gotten into the habit of copping to gaps in her knowledge. "It's essentially a legal marriage without the certificate, for couples who have been living together for a long time. There are a few requirements, but I think you two might qualify."

"You think Gansey and I might be  _married_?" Ronan very rarely feels like she's had too much to drink, even when she finds herself trapped by the toilet bowl, but she suddenly wishes she'd passed on a couple more beers.

"I think the argument could be made," Devin says, calm and quiet, as if she wants the difference between them to be as stark as possible for their complete lack of an audience. "It would buy you some time, at least. And you've certainly achieved the cohabitation requirement." She makes a face. "You have to be living and presenting yourselves as a married couple. That means joint accounts, telling people you're married. We can work with jokes; the point is just to delay the proceedings long enough to figure something out." 

"I kept forgetting to add her to the utility accounts. She called and said she was my wife, gave them my social, and had herself put on." Ronan thinks it over. "And we have a joint bank account."

Devin's eyebrows go up. "Seriously? I thought that one was a stretch."

"After everything, I wasn't doing so great." Devin affects a shocked face. "Shut up. Gansey handled most of the house stuff, basically everything that wasn't farming or taking care of Opal. But she said she was sick of me 'totally checking out of everyday life,' so even though she ended up dealing with the bills, she set up a bank account with both our names on it and pestered me about transferring money into it every month. And then it was just easier to keep using it."

"Right." Devin visibly examines herself for the will to delve further, and comes up short. "So—"

But Ronan, now, is on a roll. She gave up a very long time ago on the thought of something between her and Gansey, though she can't fairly blame Ava for believing otherwise. (This doesn't stop her from doing it, just from feeling as self-righteously wounded as she'd like.) But now she's struck by the insatiable urge to prove that her relationship with Gansey matters, that all the years she's poured into it add up to something, even if what they add up to is a sham marriage fueled in near-equal measure by concern and spite. "I'm her medical proxy, and she's mine. She listed me as her spouse so she could drag me to all these bullshit conferences. She won a cruise from a mall sweepstakes and packed us nothing but Hawaiian shirts and khakis and told everyone we were newlyweds because when we were boarding, she heard someone say gay people freaked him out."

"Jesus Christ." Devin rests her head in her hands and mutters a few different expletives, but when she looks up again, the professional mask is back in place. She pulls a notepad and pen from the zippered front pocket of her purse and starts writing. Ronan leans over the center console, but Devin blocks the sheet from view and then seems confused about having done it, like she forgot for a second that they aren't teenagers and Ronan isn't trying to get eyes on a love letter from one of her boyfriends. She lets her hand drop so Ronan can see that it's just a neatly bullet-pointed list of their evidence, such as it is.

"You know," Ronan says, and then pauses because Devin is all about efficiency and there's nothing she hates quite like long, unnecessary silences. Sure enough, her teeth start grinding audibly. Ronan waits until she suspects permanent enamel loss, and then continues, "I was kind of hoping you'd just say we could kill him. You must still have some criminal contacts, right? An unregistered gun or two?"

Devin doesn't laugh, and she doesn't look up. She says, like she's fighting back something worse, "Well, you certainly have a case. It won't hold up for long if she decides to fight it with all of the resources at her disposal, but it will buy you some time."

Gansey is still up when they get back, still sitting at the kitchen table. It's distinctly possible that she hasn't moved since Ronan left except that her hands are back on the table, the stone of the ring turned inward. Ever polite, she comes out of her fugue long enough to greet Devin, as if four am is a perfectly ordinary time to materialize across state. Devin responds in kind and then leaves the room, shooting Ronan a significant look as she does so.

"Have you calmed down?" Gansey asks, slightly cold.

"I'm always calm, Gansey." Devin plied Ronan with a carafe of black coffee and enough burnt diner toast to soak up a distillery, and while she isn't quite sober, she's close enough to be able to arrange her facial expression to read as moderately sincere. "Although anyone could forgive me for being a bit agitated, considering that you didn't even bother divorcing me before you accepted a ring from someone else."

Gansey lets this sink in for a moment. There's a look on her face like being in the same room as Ronan has just become intolerable, but she still wants to be polite about it. Her eyes flick toward the door, which is behind Ronan, and then the window. "Whatever that's supposed to mean, I'm not amused."

"Good, because it isn't a joke. According to Devin, we're common law married." Ronan squints down at Devin's notes, which are written in cramped but technically perfect cursive. The lingering haze of alcohol combines with her oncoming hangover to make it very difficult to focus. "We've lived together long enough, and we've got a joint bank account, and—" 

“Ronan, I’ve had a very long night, so if we could wrap up this ill-conceived fantasy of yours.” Gansey seems to be choosing her words very carefully, which only makes them hurt more. “I am going to get married, and I would like you to stand up with me when I do. Your invitation, though, is dependent on your behavior turning around. No claims of accidental marriage, no standing up at the 'hold your peace' bit. This was cute when we were in high school. Flattering, even. But it’s time to act like an adult."

Ronan holds herself very still, interested to see what she'll do. It seems like a toss-up between yelling and throwing something, so she's surprised to hear herself laugh. The noise is only very slightly unhinged. "Don't be like that, hun."

Gansey's hands curl into impotent fists, the skin around the poorly-sized ring turning tight and pink. Her chair skids backward, balances on two legs for a split second, and finally topples. "I am going to bed, and we will talk in the morning, when you are sober. Does that sound good?" It isn't really a question, and she doesn't wait for an answer before pushing past Ronan with considerably less than her usual courtesy and disappearing down the hall.


End file.
